


Ontari

by okteiviablake



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:47:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22435870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okteiviablake/pseuds/okteiviablake
Summary: Ontari was born extraordinary, and raised for greatness.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	Ontari

They came in the night.  
  
I remember- the wind was crisp that night, and so were the leaves, half-frozen in an early frost. When the warriors pulled us from our beds and marched us into the street, bare-footed, the ground made crackling sounds beneath our steps. A light snow was falling, the whole world blanketed in muffled silence.  
  
The night they came for us, my sister and I were asleep in our bed, our feet tucked together under the warm fur we shared. When my mother appeared above us in the darkness, her face haloed by the lantern she held aloft, I wasn’t afraid. Confused, yes, and curious- but not afraid. I had lived a sheltered life, in a small village snuggled up against the craggy shore of a lake so large you could not see across it. Before that night I had never met fear, never known horror.  
  
So, my sister and I climbed sleepily from our bed and giggled as we padded, hand-in-hand, across the wooden floor of our house and out into the dirt, our siblings trailing behind us like a drowsy procession.  
  
That’s when we saw the warriors, saw the swords drawn, saw all the doors open throughout the village, saw that all the children were being herded to the centre of town.  
  
My sister became afraid first. She squeezed my hand hard when she saw it all, and she looked up at me with wide, brown eyes that sparked with unshed tears in the firelight. I squeezed back. I whispered, “It’s okay, Mama’s right behind us.” And she was. And I knew from her face that it was _not_ okay.  
  
They organised us by age, so that the oldest children stood at one end of the street and a descending line of heads meandered all the way down to the little babies who fussed in their mothers’ arms. My sister, three years younger than me, was pulled away, and I was left alone. My mother was no longer there. My siblings were dotted throughout the queue, but what we were waiting for I didn’t know.  
  
They started with the oldest. I watched them raise knives that caught the moonlight and reflected it just enough that I couldn’t see what was being done, except to hear the screams of fright and cries of pain as the warriors slowly moved down the line. It wasn’t until they were much closer to me, by which time I was trembling with fear, that I saw what they were doing. Grabbing each child’s hand, they yanked it up high, shined torches on it nearly close enough to burn, and drew a sharp blade across the palm to open a seam of blood that dripped onto the snowy earth.  
  
Once, as a much younger child, I had fallen face-first inside my home while I ran after my brother. A tooth had loosened, making me scream with the shock and pain of it, and a silly amount of blood had spilled onto the wooden floorboards. I could remember my mother scrubbing at it with a wet cloth, her face blanched as white as snow as she drew it away stained black. I recalled the fear in her eye and in her breath as she spoke to my brother, told him that he must never speak of it to anyone. I knew not to ask questions, and always after that I was tempered- _do not run, do not fall, be careful of your step, take no risks.  
  
_ While the warriors drew nearer to me I could feel that brother watching me, see his eyes upon me from his place in line past where the warriors stood now, see the terror on his face, his hand clutched tightly in a fist dripping with red blood.  
  
As with the others, the warrior who stopped before me was efficient- a twist of the wrist, a flick of the knife, and that was it. Everyone saw my blood spill onto the snow. Everyone saw the difference in me, and I felt my heart grow cold as ice, my stomach drop with the fear of an exposure I knew would change my life forever.  
  
The warriors were stunned. It was clear they had not expected to find me, to find anyone _like_ me, and as they demanded my mother step forward and collect her children, I was herded to the side with my brothers and sisters, and then when they demanded my cousins too they joined us also, until sixteen frightened little faces surrounded me. All of them were cut. Three of them bled black, as I did- my sister whose bed I shared, my cousin who was a tow-headed toddler and wept bitterly for the injury to his hand, and my baby brother, snatched from my mother’s breast the moment his blood was revealed to be as dark as night.  
  
They took us. My mother wept, my father tried to fight. My aunt and uncle, too, begged for their child. But all the same, they took us. My final memory of those adults who loved me, of the fourteen children left behind who shared my blood but not its colour, was one of terror and loss, of screaming and fighting, of agony and horror.  
  
And then we were gone.  
  
A long carriage ride followed, so long I could never have found my way home again even if I had broken free, even if I had known the name of the place I came from. We journeyed for days upon days until finally we reached the capital, Troit, exhausted from travelling and weeping. We were paraded in front of the queen, a woman so intimidating and frightening I remember whispering to my cousin, asking if she was a real person like us or something from a fairy story. I remember my shock when my cousin, who I believed was worldly at the ripe age of ten and must know everything, could not answer me.  
  
My sister was the first to die. She was afraid to hold a sword, even a knife, even a bow. She had been a gentle soul who once wept bitterly for days after a moth singed its wings on our lantern and trembled in her palm as it died. She couldn’t bear to lift a weapon and fight, and so she died, cut down by a boy twice her age who saw her only as a minor obstacle, as a stepping stone to his queen’s favour. When I grieved for her, they made me kneel in the snow for hours, until I passed out from the chill, and then they nursed me back to health and put me out again when once more I cried for her loss. There were two choices, they said- learn or die. My queen was the only family I needed. To have nightblood was to be alone.  
  
Kneeling in that snow, half my body numb as ice and the other half on fire with the beginnings of frostbite, I lost more than my sister. I lost a part of myself, like an old skin I sloughed off to survive, covered up by the snow only to have it disappear before the summer melt. I tested the extra space around my limbs like a newfound freedom, felt myself become stronger as I grew colder, felt the relief of it- to cease caring, to cease wishing to change my circumstances, to step dreaming of my mother’s arms, to stop wishing I would see my home again. Troit _became_ my home. The queen _became_ my mother.  
  
By the time my baby brother was old enough to fight, and consequently old enough to die, I barely recalled that he was of my own mother’s womb, just as I barely recalled my own mother’s face. When they buried him, I threw a handful of snow in the grave because it was expected of me, not because I cared. He was dead and I was alive. One less nightblood, one less obstacle. That was all I cared about.  
  
I was the one to slay my cousin. Whether he felt anything for me by then or not, I have no idea. But I was glad to cut him down. They had trained me well and though he was older I was quicker than he was, stronger than he was, braver than he was. I didn’t falter, my blade did not fail me, and when I plunged it into his heart I knew that I would be the last.  
  
There were only a few more obstacles, three or four others who had trained beside me and who I had to kill before I alone remained alive. I barely remember their faces now, and I do not recall their names. I have no idea what villages they called home or whether they wept at night for their mothers. I took their lives because there can only be one Natblida kom Haiplana, and I am it. With my blade I became the hope of Azgeda, the heir to the throne of Lexa kom Trikru, Commander of the Kongeda and Leader of the Twelve Clans.  
  
On the day I killed the second-last living nightblood in Azgeda and became the last, they brought me to Queen Nia. I had met her only a handful of times, though she had watched from afar as I trained. She still held an air of mystery and otherworldliness to me. My awe of her felt like a kind of love, and when she petted my head and praised my victory it felt like a kind of warmth. I became her personal attendant and bodyguard, an honour higher even than that of the queensguard, and a noble profession to tide me over while I bided my time. Yes, she was a cruel master. But to wield power and hold it, one must be ruthless.  
  
My blood is my birthright. My sword is my strength. My queen is my inspiration. And on that day when Lexa is killed in battle or dies in her bed, I will be there. When the conclave begins, I will be there. When the dust settles and the ground is stained black with the blood of Polis’s nightbloods, I will be the one standing. And when the ascension horn sounds to tell the world that the next commander is victorious, it will sound for me.  
  
And all of it will finally make sense.


End file.
